Would you have predicted RIM to get in such sticky situation 5 years ago, when nearly every single ibankers were using the Blackberries?

Would you have predicted Nokia being acquired before the debut of the iPhone? When every other smartphones are either manufactured by Nokia or Sony.

Would you have predicted Samsung to dominate the smartphone market 5 years ago? When Android was not released yet?

And do you remember Kodak? The company that INVENTED the digital camera and dominated the whole film industry?

So why is it not possible for Nikon to go out of business in 5 years?

What are the recent breakthroughs of Nikon? I mean breakthroughs, not incremental upgrades of sensors megapixels. I dont think they will be around in the next 5 years if they keep on doing what they have been doing.

Absolutely - and all of the failures listed here have one thing in common & that is the company in question failed to understand or adapt to how people used the device. Blackberry couldn't grasp the concept of apps, Nokia couldn't grasp the concept of a "smartphone", and Kodak relied on reputation.

Not quite the case with Blackberry. The downfall of Blackberry is mostly the result of their reliance on the Waterloo path and especially the higher cost of having to maintain the Blackberry Enterprise Server. Blackberry simply cost more for fewer features. They were also very vulnerable to a couple of patent trolls a few years ago and I believe that hurt them the most and kept them Stick with archaic menu structures feature sets and many will start looking at other manufacturers that provide (even post firmware upgrades -- Thanks Fuji) with features like focus peaking.

I like focus peaking. But I don't like Sony or Fuji's menus. Funny thing, I much prefer the menus on my D600.

H'mm where was that setting again?

Been there!

However, really think I meant to write 'end-user configurable' since it overcomes much of any UI shortcomings.

This is something I've envied with Canon users with Magic Lantern and many of the up and comers. Heck, even my Panasonic super zoom runs circles around my D7000 for feature set and configuration. This has led me to shooting with it more than my Nikon...

Makes me wonder though - there are soooo many things to change on the D600 for instance, I'm of the opinion that a simple text based menu is preferred.

As I evaluated the D800 vs the D600, it's bizarre that the D800 gets the ability to 'pixel peek' while the D600 doesn't. Yet the D600 can have better U bank settings than it's big brother.

I'm not aware of that feature. It's it an instant zoom?

The one thing I sorely wish the D600 had was more than 3 exposures in bracketing.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about -- something I've hated with Nikon (though not exclusive to them) for years --- Something they also could have fixed 5 years ago...

(For example, a setting pertaining to manual focus would be grayed out if you were in an autofocus mode.) The problem was, the camera wouldn't tell you why something was grayed out! It was often a puzzle, and a guessing game of many steps to figure out why the @#! you couldn't change a given menu setting.

I suspect others complained to Sony about this as well, so it probably wasn't just me bringing it up every time I had a chance to talk with their engineers, but I'm happy to report that Sony listened, and the new A7 actually tells you why you can't access grayed-out menu options! To my mind, this was the single biggest thing Sony needed to change in their user interface